Some Dance to Forget
by rock x crazii 342
Summary: Slightly dark one-shot. Hermione, post-war.


My first attempt at angst! Well, in the recent past. This just came to me while I was listening to "Hotel California" by the Eagles.

I know I have two stories in-progress, but I couldn't resist. The idea was just too tempting. Enjoy :)

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_Some dance to remember,__** some dance to forget**_…

Her mind was racing.

It was dead, and yet it was flying. Her eyes were blind, and yet she saw the smoky air, the reflections of cool crystal lights off of shiny, sweat-soaked outfits.

She was deaf, and yet she heard the pounding music, reverberating in her soul, the very soul that had been ripped from her slight form and dashed to non-existence under a cool moonlit sky.

There was everybody around her, and yet she moved in a world of her own. So many gyrating bodies squished her, but she felt none of them. She gave herself away willingly, relieved to let the memories float away for a while. The strange faces around her gave comfort in that they triggered nothing in her tortured brain.

Her feet ached, but she didn't feel them. She let the music drown out her very being and crash through her like raging water through a brick wall; she moved and moved and liquidated herself to the point of no going back, no going forward.

Each shake was a tear she had never shed. Each bend was a scream she had never let loose. Each bead of sweat dotting her forehead was a word she hadn't let out, a feeling she hadn't shown to the people she was trying to protect.

But in the end, there was no protection. There was no promise, no loyalty, and no life. There was only disaster, only soul-crushing in its very worst form.

The world was sans evil once again—but what was a world without love and hope?

She moved herself faster and harder. She pushed herself up against a stranger, a strange man that she didn't fear. She didn't fear anything anymore. There was no emotion but pure, unbridled passion coursing through her, a frustrated sort of passion, the only outlet she knew for the fear and sorrow and anger that had been bursting through her blood for so long.

She moved on quickly, person to person, barely even caring if it was a man or a woman. She had given up on attachments; they only served to hurt, and maim. Perhaps her green-clothed enemies at Hogwarts had something when they refused to make allies, refused to pledge allegiance, refused to settle their hearts in another.

Half of her was gone, as it were. She had given herself to another human so wholly and purely, and while he had not taken her innocence with him to the grave, he had taken every other part of her.

Something bright and red flashed in her eyes, and she distractedly felt her stomach drop. She felt like she was detached from her own body, floating high above herself, watching with a sick feeling, the kind that bubbled up until….

She shut her eyes, put her arms up, and let the beat flow through her. It did no good to remember.

No one knew her here. No one would point and whisper, grimly offering their pity and condolence. No one graciously stepped aside to let her through the door first, and no one cared if they jostled her almost to the ground. Here, she was no better or worse than anyone else, with no expectation to share herself and no expectation to keep it to herself. There were no expectations at all, no attachments, no promises or timidity.

There was no emotion.

That was the part she liked best of all.

Here she could focus purely on everything physical, and lock away the emotional part of herself. Everything she couldn't say and didn't want to hear came out in her fluid movements, her urgent need for something to fill her up so completely that it drove out all things related to feeling.

"Hey, beautiful," Someone breathed in her ear, and she could almost _hear_ the alcohol in his voice.

Wonderful. He wouldn't remember her. She latched onto him and smoothed her body against his, moving in time to the beat and forgetting she had a heartbeat, and a past, for a while. He grabbed her and the pain didn't register. He leered at her and she felt no outrage, just indifference.

A different man pulled her away, and she didn't protest, didn't say a word. Her mind was blank, and all she could feel was the thumping pulsing through her.

She let herself be pushed from place to place, uncaring of where she ended up. Nowhere could be worse than where she was when she found herself alone and undistracted. That place was a place she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy—a place full of nightmares and misery, pain and depression.

At least she had found her haven, in a scruffy Muggle club, surrounded by disheveled, seedy people. That was where she belonged—she was eternally marked and sullied by what had come to pass by her own hand, by her own intention. Nothing could ever right what she had wronged, and nothing could ever right the wrongs that had been wrought upon those closest to her heart.

Surprisingly enough, she held no hate anymore. It had all slipped away somewhere in the midst of the grief and the helplessness. She placed no fault with anyone, and felt nothing within herself telling her to seek vengeance. She liked to tell herself she had come to accept it, but if she didn't block off her heart she would know it was a lie.

Faster and faster she spun, her world shaking and twirling. This was how it should be. At least now her surroundings matched her mind. She had always wondered, after everything, how the world could be so normal when her mind was spinning out of control.

An insane laugh slipped from her lips, and she was oblivious to it. No one cared; no one paid attention. She continued to turn until she reached her breaking point, the point she had come to love and to hate. Here she felt nothing but a dull ache in her brain, saw nothing but darkness, and knew nothing but here and now. There was no past and present, no happiness or sadness. Only _this_

A second passed, and then she collapsed onto a nearby stranger. She didn't look at him, didn't see his curious, no longer spiteful, also war-worn gray eyes as he helped her to her feet. She didn't catch his white-blonde hair shining in the dim, musky room, too caught up in her own thoughts.

She shoved her way, viciously, through the club. She was tiny, but the strength that had been so frequently employed, much too recently, remained with her and she had little difficulty pressing through the airtight pack.

Her breath came out in short gasps as she stood on the edge of the action, and she reached up to touch her tangled, slightly damp hair. A brief moment later, she forced herself towards the door. With one last look, longingly, at the club, Hermione Granger put on her coat and disappeared into the night, nearly invisible against the starless sky.

Maybe she would be back tomorrow, or maybe the footsteps echoing after hers, chasing her into the emptiness, were going to be her salvation.

**_This could be heaven or this could be hell_**...


End file.
